We currently use Bob Jones Online so my daughter (age 12) has a "blog" connected with her online school log-in. Most likely we will be moving towards using just the books next school year instead of watching the videos online (since I end up teaching all the lessons anyway). I'm assuming that when we switch from online videos, she will no longer have access to her profile and online buddies.

So...I need to find her a replacement. She loves to connect with kids her age. She likes to write things in her "blog" about movies she likes, things she does with her friends, etc. Is there somewhere on line that is NOT connected to a particular curriculum that is safe for her to network with other kids like her? I realize that there are places like Facebook but I'm not quite ready to let her loose in Facebook-land yet.

Well, depending on how daring you are (and how much oversight you can provide) setting her up on WordPress or BlogSpot would be great. It would also give your daughter an opportunity to get into the "nitty gritty" of the blog, actually seeing how some of the HTML works and using/rearranging widgets. (but if she's not interested in that that's fine too, it's still perfectly easy to create posts about movies or books or school)

The main disadvantage is that there isn't a built in community, so she would have to share her new page with her friends before you stop using the Bob Jones Online service. I think you would still have to keep an eye on her web browsing, and if you're still uncomfortable about using either WordPress or BlogSpot you should definitely keep them in mind as she gets older, because they are very good tools to get into website design which can come in handy for just about any opportunity later in life.

We currently use Bob Jones Online so my daughter (age 12) has a "blog" connected with her online school log-in. Most likely we will be moving towards using just the books next school year instead of watching the videos online (since I end up teaching all the lessons anyway). I'm assuming that when we switch from online videos, she will no longer have access to her profile and online buddies.

So...I need to find her a replacement. She loves to connect with kids her age. She likes to write things in her "blog" about movies she likes, things she does with her friends, etc. Is there somewhere on line that is NOT connected to a particular curriculum that is safe for her to network with other kids like her? I realize that there are places like Facebook but I'm not quite ready to let her loose in Facebook-land yet.

Ideas?

How much power will you have to monitor the kind of responses she will inevitably get? I prefer wordpress as a platform because you have so much more control. You could start the blog for her under your email address and then invite her to be an author (There is that option in wordpress). That way she can write whenever she feels like it, using her own user name and password but you will have the power to monitor the comments she gets. Then once you approve, she can reply to the comments.